


Principles

by elderflower_tea



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alpha Severus Snape, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha/Omega, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Female Harry Potter, Friends to Lovers, Good Severus Snape, Manipulative Albus Dumbledore, Mentor Severus Snape, Omega Harry Potter, POV Severus Snape, Protective Severus Snape, Slow Burn, So Very Slow, but in a very canon typical manner, nothing explicit happens until she's seventeen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-16 07:13:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 20,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28952499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elderflower_tea/pseuds/elderflower_tea
Summary: Severus Snape is many things: an alpha, a potions master, a spy, a sheer and utter bastard of a man, and a reluctant teacher of the witches and wizards of tomorrow being chief among them. One thing he absolutely refuses to be however, no matter how well it would contribute to his carefully cultivated image of the Vile Bat of the Dungeons, Bane of Students Everywhere, is to be deliberately nasty to his omega students.Or: Severus Snape might be a spy and a bastard, but he's a spy and a bastard with some principles, so he can't exactly go around being nasty to the tiny omega named Harriet Potter that he swore an oath to protect. This has consequences that he can safely admit that he didn't see coming.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Severus Snape
Comments: 61
Kudos: 622





	1. Year 1

**Author's Note:**

> So this idea came to me while I was trying to fall asleep and I ended up typing about 2000 words of outline on my phone at midnight so I didn't forget it all come morning. The next day rolled around and I still had thoughts for it rolling around in my head, so I went on and finished up the outline and started fleshing it out, and here you guys go.
> 
> This is unbetaed and will be updated as I go with the writing, which will probably go in bursts as I continue to work on the HP long-fic I'm trying to get some decent headway on before I start posting.
> 
> Enjoy!

Severus Snape is many things: an alpha, a potions master, a spy, a sheer and utter bastard of a man, and a reluctant teacher of the witches and wizards of tomorrow being chief among them. One thing he absolutely refuses to be however, no matter how well it would contribute to his carefully cultivated image of the Vile Bat of the Dungeons, Bane of Students Everywhere, is to be deliberately nasty to his omega students. He’ll be harsh when they do things in his classroom that threatens the health and safety of themselves and their peers sure, and he’ll dock points the same way he does for the rest of the dunderheads he finds himself teaching, but he refuses to be  _ that _ alpha. There are enough terrible alphas out there in the world as it is, and he refuses to let the only alpha on Hogwarts’ staff be someone to fear simply because of their designation. Most students fear him anyways, because he’s a harsh instructor and has his persona as a spy to uphold, but at the very least he knows from conversations with his older students that they don’t fear him because he’s an alpha, and he’s grateful.

It's 1991 and Severus sits at the staff table as Minerva places the sorting hat on Harriet Potter’s head. The sorting takes longer than he expects, though the outcome comes as no surprise at all--Gryffindor. He takes a sip of his wine and tries not to glower too harshly at the small girl who looks far too much like her father.

On Friday he had the first year Gryffindors and Slytherins first thing, and the first thing he noticed when the group of students filed into the room was that there was an omega in the class. It had to be one of Gryffindors, he had met with all of his first-year Slytherins over the first three days of classes and they were all betas save Miss Bulstrode, who was a young alpha that he suspected would need some guidance as she grew older seeing as female alphas were even rarer than omegas. He scans the room and takes stock of the young faces sitting before him as he calls role, and feels a stone fall into the pit of his stomach as he meets the eyes of the young Miss Potter, who is even tinier up close than she seemed at the sorting, and is sitting there with James Potter’s hair, glasses, and tanned skin and Lily Evan’s green eyes and facial structure.

“Harriet Potter,” he calls, and can’t bring himself to say anything more, even if it would fit his persona, because Harriet Potter is the young, tiny, omega in his potions classroom and he refuses to be that alpha. He asks her about the Draught of Living Death, but turns to Miss Granger when she is unable to answer and doesn’t single her out for the rest of the class period. He finds himself suppressing a smile when he realizes that she was the only student taking notes on his introductory speech without prompting, and thinks that maybe James Potter’s child will be less of a nuisance than he anticipated.

Harriet Potter proves to be just as much of a nuisance as he anticipated, albeit in a wholly unanticipated manner, when she almost manages to get killed by a cursed broom during her very first Quidditch match. Granted, this isn’t her fault, and she’s proved herself to be a polite, mostly well behaved, and relatively studious student in her time since starting at Hogwarts, but Severus did not come to this match intending to perform powerful countercurses, so he thinks his irritation is reasonable. He also can’t say that he’s ungrateful to whoever deemed it fit to  _ light Quirinus on fire _ , as it seems to have stopped the spell cast on Potter’s broom, but he is rather concerned about both the fact that someone  _ set his coworker on fire _ , and that setting said coworker on fire seemed to stop the curse. Maybe this would get Albus to finally listen to his suspicions about Quirinus’ change in character since returning from his sabbatical abroad. Ignoring the newly acquired stutter and culturally inappropriate headwear, the man’s scent had changed drastically since he was the Muggle Studies professor, and Severus didn’t like that one bit.

The rest of term flew by in a manner that he only became accustomed to after several years of teaching. Between his regular duties of keeping his students from poisoning or exploding themselves or their classmates, acting as mentor, counsellor, and guardian for his Slytherins in his role as head of house, and trying to knock some sense into the heads of the handful of young alphas that attended the school, he spent time working on his various other tasks for Albus. Namely: keeping an eye on Quirinus, whose activities only seemed to get more suspicious as the school year progressed, keeping an ear out for interesting news from his old Death Eater contacts, and keeping an eye on Harriet Potter.

Two of these three extra tasks seemed to be coming to a head simultaneously, and as a man who did not believe in coincidence, he did not like that at all.

“Miss Potter is where, doing what?” He asked a tear-stained and panicked Miss Granger, who he had come across in the hall as she dashed off towards the owlery in the middle of the night, seemingly unconcerned about the racket her echoing footsteps were causing.

“She, she’s in the third floor corridor trying to keep Quirrell from getting the stone, and Ron’s hurt, and she went into the room after the one with the poisons  _ alone _ , and I said I’d owl the headmaster and go get help,” she said, clearly on the verge of tears once again, as every word that passed through her lips made his fear of the outcome of this situation even worse.

“Go,” he said to the girl, and he found himself sprinting towards the third-floor, only pausing when he reached the doorway to the corridor with the three-headed dog. He paused for a moment to catch his breath and compose himself before pressing his hand and his wand to a specific stone next to the door, muttered a passcode that caused the stone to glow a pale purple, and opened the door, which let him into the room that he had designed with the logic puzzle, where he grabbed a bottle of the potion he needed to proceed through the black flames out of the magically expanded inner breast pocket of hisrobes, downed it, and entered the final room.

He was not prepared for what he found.

He didn’t know what it was exactly that he was expecting, but it wasn’t the tiny girl, too pale (too tiny) and clammy, collapsed on the floor next to the barely-identifiable charred husk of a corpse that had belonged to one Quirinus Quirrell. He made the mistake of taking a single deep breath and getting a lungful of the smell of burnt flesh mingled with the scent of a terrified omega child, and he felt the sort of deep rage building in his stomach that meant that his eyes were flashing red and a growl was building in his chest. He found himself rushing towards the girl and checking for her pulse, praying that she was still alive and that he wasn’t too late, and his relief that she just seemed to be unconscious helped temper the rage that meant that if Quirrell was still alive Albus would have to be finding two new professors at the end of this term instead of just one because Severus would be in Azkaban for the murder of one of his coworkers.

He took another calming breath and scooped the girl up into his arms, and proceeded back through the maze of rooms that made up the protections for the stone, recalling in the back of his mind that Miss Granger had mention that the youngest Mister Weasley was injured and that he should probably collect the boy as well as Miss Potter. He found the boy in the wreckage of a chess game, and suspected that he had received a blow to the head. He conjured a stretcher that he carefully levitated the boy onto, and brought the two children to the infirmary, hoping in equal measures that Albus both had and had not returned yet because he wasn’t quite sure if he’d rather kill the old man for endangering these students or shake him down for answers.

A few days later, as he scowled at Albus’ blatant display of favoritism and at the prospect of having to be the one to deal with the house full of students who had just had their hard-earned win of the house cup stolen from them, he can’t help but wish that Albus had at least seen fit to answer some of his questions about what was going on in the big picture. Why hadn’t Albus noticed that the Dark Lord had been possessing one of his employees? If Albus had noticed, why didn’t he do anything about it? Did he have any sort of inkling as to what the Dark Lord’s next steps might be? 

At the very least, he wished that the other man had answered his questions about Miss Potter, instead of brushing off his concerns as if Severus wanting to know that the girl was going somewhere safe over the summer was some horrible breach of privacy.

“Don’t worry, my boy,” he had said, his eyes twinkling in that utterly infuriating way they tended towards when Albus was dancing around the point, “dear Harriet is going back home to her family and she’ll be just as safe as she was before coming to Hogwarts.”

For someone who has made Severus vow to protect the girl, he was frequently quite vague when it came to her actual safety. He glanced over to the Gryffindor table, where the girl was surrounded by her friends and the small group was being congratulated and thanked by the rest of their housemates for winning them the cup, and Harriet had a sort of baffled and shy smile on her face as Percy Weasley shook her hand. 

Hopefully, Albus would be correct and Harriet would be perfectly safe this summer. If not, well, Severus had stopped by the infirmary that afternoon before Poppy had dismissed the girl and handed her a slip of parchment with his phone number on it.

“Don’t use it unless it’s an emergency,” he had said, giving her a stern look, “but I am the only staff member with an active phone line, so if something happens and you need to contact one of us and cannot for whatever reason use your owl, you can call it.” The look she had given him was wide-eyed and stunned, and it took her slightly too long to be considered polite to respond, and her voice had an odd sort of strained quality to it when she spoke.

“Thank you, professor,” she had said, and gave him a hesitant smile, after which he had given her a curt nod and turned on his heel and stalked out of the infirmary, his robes billowing behind him as he went.

Everything should be fine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know when exactly the next chapter will be up, but it should be soon! This will also probably be the shortest chapter, provided I continue with the format of having one chapter per year of Harriet's time at Hogwarts.


	2. Year 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who commented, kudosed, or subscribed after reading the first chapter! It was lovely to realize how many of you like this so far, and really inspired me to do the writing that I did to get this chapter out today!

The summer goes by much in the way it always does, and Severus is grateful that Albus seemed to have been right for once in regards to Miss Potter’s welfare at her relative’s home. He is not, however, grateful for Albus’ latest hiring decision for the post of Defense Against the Dark Arts professor.

“You hired  _ Gilderoy Lockhart?”  _ he snarls, torn between being incredulous that Albus decided to hire that fool of a man as a professor, and furious that he decided to hire an alpha with that sort of reputation.

“He was the best applicant for the job, and you know that application pool gets shallower each and every year Severus,” Albus says in that infuriatingly benign way of his, and Severus clenches his jaw to keep himself from saying or doing anything too rash.

“You do recall that  _ I  _ once again submitted an application for the post, do you not Headmaster?” 

“Ahh, but I need you far more in your current position than I need you as the Defense professor my boy,” he says, and Severus finds himself taking a few steadying breaths before replying.

“If he so much as looks at any of the older omega students, especially any of my Slytherins, in a way that is anything less than strictly professional, I will not be held accountable for my actions Albus,” he says, and Albus purses his lips.

“You know as well as I do that omegas are considered to be adults in the eyes of the law after their first heat Severus.”

“And you know as well as I do that Lockhart has a less than ideal reputation Albus.”

The headmaster sighs and leans back in his chair, grabbing a hard candy from the bowl on his desk and popping it into his mouth before responding.

“Everything will be fine Severus.”

Severus exhales, and turns to leave.

“It better be.”

It’s the first of September and the train should have just left King’s Cross Station when Severus feels the stone he keeps in his pocket that alerts him if his landline at Spinner’s End is ringing heat up in his pocket.

“Damn,” he mutters, and tosses some floo powder into the fireplace in front of him and has only a split second to be grateful that he was in his office when the stone got hot as it allows him to reach the phone just before it stops ringing.

“Hello?”

“Hello, um, Professor Snape, is that you?” he hears a girl’s voice from the other end, coming from what sounds like a crowded public location, and Severus feels a sense of foreboding growing in his stomach as she continues, “It’s Harriet Potter.”

“Hello Miss Potter,” he says, wondering what in Merlin's name could have happened to cause her to be calling him from what is probably a pay-phone instead of being safely aboard the Hogwarts Express and on her way to the castle. “What happened that caused you to be calling me instead of boarding the train with your peers?”

“Well, um,” her voice becomes muffled for a moment, “No Ron, I don’t have to yell, that’s not how phones  _ work _ ,” and the idea that the youngest Weasley is with her only increases his sense of dread about the situation before her voice becomes clear again, “sorry Professor, Ron’s never seen someone use a phone before. We were trying to get onto the platform and it was fine for the rest of the Weasley’s, but as soon as Ron and I tried to get onto the platform the barrier turned back into a solid brick wall, and so we missed the train and can’t even get back onto the platform, and nobody’s coming back out through the barrier either, so we can’t ask Mr. and Mrs. Weasley for help, and so I hope you don’t mind that I called your number, but this seemed like it would qualify as some sort of emergency.”

And that was certainly a lot to process. The barrier being closed was certainly a problem that would need to be dealt with, probably by the ministry, and if he was lucky, Potter and Weasley would be the only students stranded on that side of the barrier, though a number of people could easily be stuck on the magical platform on the other side, especially if it had become sealed to any other magical means of transportation.

“Yes, I believe that this would qualify Miss Potter. You and Mister Weasley should go and find a bench near the barrier and wait until another professor or I arrive to collect you and bring you to the castle. It may take a while for someone to arrive since several parties must be notified about the problem with the barrier.”’

“Alright professor. Thank you!” she said, a note of relief audible in her voice, and he heard her hang up the phone, suddenly grateful that he had had the foresight to give her the number if only so he didn’t have to deal with whatever hairbrained scheme she and the youngest Weasley boy came up with to get to school if they had been unable to easily contact an adult. He takes a moment to conjure his patronus. The doe that had replaced the runespore of his youth upon Lily’s death and his subsequent vow to protect her child cocks her head as she looks up at him.

“I need you to go to Minerva and Albus and relay this message: ‘Meet me in my office. There’s a problem with the barrier at King’s Cross and I have been contacted by a pair of students who were unable to board the train because of it.’” He nods once at the spectral creature and she bounds off through the nearest wall before he steps over to the fireplace, tosses in a pinch of floo powder from the jar on his mantlepiece, and steps back through to his office so this mess can be dealt with.

The debacle with the train station takes longer to deal with than Severus had hoped, but it makes him all the more grateful that Miss Potter had called him instead of going with Mister Weasley’s plan, which was to steal his father’s car and  _ fly  _ it to Scotland, breaking just about a hundred laws and the Statute of Secrecy in the process. He and Minerva had apparated to a designated apparition zone outside the station, and had come in to find Miss Potter and Mister Weasley where he had told the girl to wait for them, much to his relief, though he refused to let that show on his face. He didn’t exactly expect anything to happen to them in the half-hour they were waiting in the middle of a crowded train station, but they were two unaccompanied children, one of whom was an omega, waiting unsupervised in a public area on a Tuesday. Even if no one approached them with nefarious intentions, it was not outside the realm of possibility that a station employee could wind up approaching them. In the end, it took another half an hour of he and Minerva taking turns subtly casting charms and countercurses on the barrier trying to see if they could do anything to open it back up to the public--he was correct in his assumption that other modes of magical transport into and out of the platform would also be blocked, he couldn’t even apparate in--before they came to the conclusion that it would be best if one of them took the students back to the castle while the other contacted the ministry. As soon as Minerva had left with the two children, Miss Potter having given him a wide grin and cheerful thank you for the assistance, whatever block that had been in place seemed to have lifted, and Severus was nearly trampled by the group of adult Wizards making their way off the platform. After reassuring a frantic Molly Weasley that her son and his friend were alright and already at the castle, Severus finally made his escape and spent a minute hoping that the chaos of the morning wouldn’t set the tone for the school year.

Luckily for him, the first few weeks of classes seemed to be perfectly normal. He only has to threaten Lockhart about the handful of older omega students once, Longbottom seems to be melting fewer cauldrons, Harriet Potter has yet to do something that’ll see her killed or maimed, and he actually has a few NEWT and older OWL students that are promising enough at the art of potions that he might start subtly encouraging them to look into apprenticeships in the field. All things considered, by the time the end of October rolls around, Severus’ year is off to a pretty good start. 

And then it’s Halloween, and he lives in Wizarding Britain so of course something goes wrong. Honestly, at this point Severus might as well start a betting pool amongst the staff on what absurd yet horrifying event will occur on Halloween this year. 

_ THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS HAS BEEN OPENED. ENEMIES OF THE HEIR, BEWARE.  _

A phrase written on the wall in blood, a petrified cat is hanging from a torch, and the whole school stumbles across the scene moments after Harriet Potter, Ron Weasley, and Hermione Granger do. He listens to their explanations about the deathday party, and questions why they didn’t go to the feast afterwards, but isn’t surprised when he doesn’t get a real answer out of them.

That night, he scans through all the reference materials he has that mention the Chamber of Secrets, but none of them have any sort of straightforward answer as to what sort of monster resides within the Chamber, or how one would go about controlling it. He sighs and heads off to bed.

Another week passes, and while there’s no development on the Chamber of Secrets front, it’s the only thing the school seems to want to talk about. Honestly, Severus is sick of the topic of discussion, mostly because there seems to be no actual facts about the Chamber, only rumors, legends, and hearsay. He finds himself pondering the likelihood of the existence of Salazar Slytherin’s secret library in the chamber--something mentioned in several of the older texts referencing the Chamber of Secrets, but not present in the modern legend--when he finds Miss Potter staring at an unusually noisy painting of a snake a few meters down from the second year potions classroom.

He pauses for a moment, observing the girl interact with the painting, when he realizes that the portrait is not the only one hissing. He has a moment where he feels like his blood runs cold as her listens to the girl converse with the portrait in Parseltongue, before shaking himself out of it and approaching her.

“I did not know that you were a Parselmouth, Miss Potter,” he said, watching as her brows furrow in confusion.

“What’s a Parselmouth?” she asks, and honestly, how didn’t she know?

“Someone who can talk to snakes.”

“Oh, yeah! This is Sylva, and she’s a Saharan Horned Viper! She’s been telling me about where other portraits of snakes are located around the school because it gets boring only having a handful of other snakes to talk to all the time and she thinks that I should go talk to them as well,” she says, as if going around having conversations with portraits of snakes because they apparently get lonely is a perfectly normal thing for a pre-teen witch to be doing. It takes him a moment to come up with a proper response.

“I suppose it could get rather dull. How long have you known that you can talk to snakes?” he ends up asking, and she tilts her head at him in a rather inquisitive manner.

“Well, there have always been snakes in my aunt’s garden, and I had a pretty excellent conversation with a boa constrictor at the zoo right before I got my Hogwarts letter,” she pauses before asking a question of her own. “Can’t loads of people talk to snakes though?”

He’s torn between wanting to smile at how happy the ability seems to make her and wanting to find out how she made it to age twelve talking to snakes without ever realizing how rare the trait is.

“No Miss Potter, ‘loads’ of people cannot talk to snakes. It’s an extremely uncommon magical ability,” he pauses, and weighs his words before continuing, “I would urge you to to keep this ability under wraps for the time being. The last two well-known Parselmouths on the British Isles were the Dark Lord and Salazar Slytherin himself, and considering the school’s current climate, I could not recommend advertising that you can speak to snakes to Hogwarts’ student body.”

She paled slightly at his statement, and purses her lips.

“You said ‘on the British Isles.’” 

He does smile a little bit at that, and starts walking in the direction of his office. “That I did Miss Potter, come with me, I have a book you might like to take a look at.” He leads her to the sitting room attached to his office and private quarters, where he will sometimes have meetings with groups of his prefects or when acting in his capacity as head of house for a student who needs to talk to him about more personal matters and would be more comfortable in a less formal setting than his office. He goes over to one of the bookcases, and spends a moment locating a specific book before pulling it from a shelf and handing it to the girl.

“ _ Magical Snakes of Southeast Asia and the Witches and Wizards who Speak to Them, _ ” she reads aloud, and looks at him with an expression that’s somewhere between shock and gratitude.

“Your father and I were in the same year at Hogwarts, and while we did not like each other, I was aware of the fact that his mother immigrated to this country from India, and he was vocal about Parseltongue not being an inherently evil magical trait when it became common knowledge that the Dark Lord possessed the ability.” He swallowed, and did not allow the grimace to show on his face. Severus was hard pressed to say anything positive about James Potter, but in this instance, keeping quiet on this might do more harm than good in the long run, and though he was unlikely to ever state it aloud, he cared about this girl's well being. “I was under the impression that the trait ran in his mother’s family. I acquired this book several years ago when a student from my house with a similar background to your own was revealed to be a Parselmouth and was treated poorly by his peers. He said that he found it to be an enlightening and educational read.” He turns to the side table and shuffles around a few stacks of paper in order to give the girl the semblance of some privacy as she appears to blink away tears. Her scent has shifted towards one that doesn’t quite read happy and doesn’t quite read upset, and yet doesn’t not read like either of those emotions either.

“Thank you,” she says, her voice quiet, and he turns and gives her the barest hint of a smile.

“You are welcome, Miss Potter.”

The year goes on, and it only goes downhill from Halloween onwards. A rogue bludger tries to kill Miss Potter in a Quidditch match, resulting in a broken arm that that buffoon Lockhart turns into a deboned arm. Colin Creevy became the school’s first human petrification victim that same night. Lockhart attempts to hold a duelling club that goes so poorly as not to be repeated. Justin Finch-Fletchley and a  _ ghost _ are petrified next. Parents are writing to him daily asking about the attacks at the school, and he knows for a fact that he has it easiest out of the four heads of houses and the headmaster on the letter writing front.

Everything comes to a head when Ginny Weasley is brought into the Chamber itself.

He is rather uninvolved in the whole debacle, having been tasked with sweeping the dungeons once again for any sign of the entrance to the Chamber, and he hasn’t even finished by the time he receives a patronus from Minerva, telling him to call off the search and meet her in his office because the girl has been found and the headmaster co-opted hers.

He doesn’t know why he’s surprised that Harriet Potter of all people managed to find and open the Chamber, but he finds himself having to sit down as Minerva fills him in on the rest of the night’s events. Of course Potter would be able to open the Chamber’s entrance as a Parselmouth, and between the need to use the language and the entrance being located in a mostly abandoned girl’s bathroom of all places would explain why none of the staff members who spent the year scouring the school for any sign of the entrance would have been able to find it. Likewise, a basilisk being the monster held within the Chamber is of little surprise. It had been on the short list of potential monsters after all, as one of the few magical creatures known to petrify its victims, and a giant snake at that.

The fact that Harriet Potter, a twelve-year-old omega girl, had single-handedly slain a 1,000 year old basilisk that was being controlled by the spectre of a teenage Voldemort? That was a surprise, and a rather unpleasant one at that.

“She did what?” he finds himself hissing at his coworker, who doesn’t look particularly pleased about the outcome of events herself.

“She killed it single handedly, and from what I heard, got bitten by the creature and healed by Albus’ phoenix all during the course of events.”

“Did she not think to say, find a teacher before running head-first into danger once again?” he finds himself asking as he summons a bottle of firewhiskey and two glasses and pours a drink for both himself and Minerva. The woman snorts.

“She and Ronald Weasley brought  _ Gilderoy _ , the damn fool.” Severus stared at her uncomprehendingly.

“I’m sorry, I should have specified, did they not think to find a useful teacher?”

“I’m under the impression that they overheard him boasting of going to find the Chamber, and having figured out where it was located, thought to help him,” she said, and Severus shook his head, taking a slow sip from his drink and relishing the burn as he tried not to be too furious with the girl.

“And where was Gilderoy in all this?” Minerva scoffs, a look of disgust flashing over her face.

“He tried to obliviate the two of them using Weasley’s broken wand, and the spell backfired. He currently has no idea who he is.”

Severus felt a flash of horror at the prospect of Lockhart having tried to wipe the memories of two _children_ , quickly followed by a sense of vicious justice that the spell had backfired upon the man.

“At least the children are all alive,” he ends up saying after a long silence, and Minerva nods.

Later, when he finds out that Albus gave both Potter and Weasley 200 house points and an Award for Special Services to the School, Minerva has to talk him down from going and finding their employer and murdering him for encouraging the damn girl and rewarding her for her stupid, reckless, behavior that was going to wind up getting her and her friends killed one of these days.

The day before the train is set to bring all the students back to London for the summer holidays, Severus hears a knock on his office door.

“Come in,” he says, and doesn’t look up until he’s done reading the list of graduating students--he was displeased to discover that Marcus Flint would be having to repeat his seventh year--and recognizes that it’s Miss Potter by scent.

“What can I do for you Miss Potter,” he asks, finally looking up from his parchment, and sees that she’s holding the book that he lent to her earlier in the term.

“I just wanted to return your book, sir,” she says, holding it out with a small smile on her face, “I really enjoyed reading it and wanted to thank you for letting me borrow it.”

“You may keep it,” he says, and continues before she can speak, “under one condition.” Her face falls slightly into a hesitant sort of mask, and her scent sours slightly from the bubbling happiness it had been just moments before, and he continues before she can truly get the wrong idea.

He looks her straight in the eyes, and says: “If you ever plan on doing something as reckless as what you did to save Miss Weasley again, you must go and find a  _ competent _ teacher first. While I am relieved that Miss Weasley did not perish, you and I both know that Lockhart was going to be of little help while facing off against a basilisk, and you or either of the Weasley’s could have easily been killed during the encounter. Do not do something so foolhardy again.”

Harriet’s eyes were wide, and Severus did not like how surprised she looked at someone expressing genuine concern over her well being.

“I won’t do something like that again, professor,” she eventually says, and pauses before asking, “which of the teachers would you consider to be competent?”

He almost rolls his eyes at her question, but answers her nonetheless. “Myself, or any of the other three heads of houses, Professors Vector, Sinistra, or Babbling, and Madams Hooch and Pomfrey,” he says, and pauses, “the competency of your Defense Against the Dark Arts Professors change every year, so I would air on the side of caution regarding them.”

“Alright professor. I’ll--I’ll be more careful in the future,” she says, and smiles at him in a manner that is more genuine than he almost ever sees from one of his students. “Thank you for the book, and I hope you have a nice summer.” She turns and starts to exit his office.

“Miss Potter?” She turns her head, and he gives her a small smile. “I hope you have an enjoyable summer as well.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter should be out soon, but it'll definitely take longer than a day since I have a full-time job that I'll need to be getting to instead of just sitting around writing now that it's no longer the weekend. Thanks again for reading!


	3. Summer of 1993

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy cow you guys, I am floored by the response I've gotten from this fic! Thank you everyone for the kudos and comments, they make my day when I see them. A special thanks to the people who said that they're enjoying my characterization of Snape in this fic. I reread the series recently for the first time in years, and for the first time as an adult, and I have a lot of feelings about this man and his career as both a spy and a teacher, and part of my desire to write this fic was based in the opportunity to explore Snape as a character.
> 
> Now, on a logistical note. Some of you may notice that I changed the number of expected chapters from /7 to /???. This is because I originally intended to have this fic consist of seven singular chapters that each more or less cover the events of a single book. And then I started to write this chapter. I was about 2,500 words in, not even close to the end of an important conversation, and not even a quarter of the way through my outline for chapter three, and I decided that the last four chapters were going to have to be broken up for my own sanity. So yay! Longer fic and more chapters!

There’s still a month and a half until term starts and Severus is already wondering where the 1993-1994 school year is going to rank on his list of “Worst Years as a Hogwarts Professor.”

Honestly, he doesn’t know why he expected Sirius Black to stop being an utter pain in his arse when the man was arrested in 1981 and sentenced to life in Azkaban seeing as the man seems to have been born with a preternatural ability to make Severus’ life a living hell, but he had, and now he’s regretting that assumption. Honestly, the only thing that should be surprising about the fact that Sirius Black had escaped from Azkaban is the fact that he hadn’t managed to do so sooner if only to piss Severus off. And to make matters worse, Severus had been informed just this morning that not only had he once again been passed over for the post as Defense Against the Dark Arts instructor, but Albus had hired Remus Lupin of all people to fill the post, and also 'Oh, by the way Severus, you wouldn’t happen to mind making an incredibly complex and time-consuming potion and also substitute teach three days of class a month for all seven years of students would you? It’s not like you already have to teach several hundred hormone-addled teenagers how to brew potions without killing themselves, have a quarter of the student body that you’re in charge of, and also do the majority of the brewing for the hospital wing. No, you will not be receiving a raise or bonus for this.'

Long story short, Severus is currently deeply regretting most of his life decisions that brought him to this point in his life, and also his decision to not go on holiday this year to somewhere warm and sunny where nobody spoke English.

The summer gets that much worse at the beginning of August. He and Minerva are sitting down for drinks in her quarters when Albus’ head appears in the fireplace.

“Minerva, we have an emergency, may I step through?” He asks, and Severus is torn between throwing back the freshly poured scotch in his glass for fortitude because a Dumbledore relayed emergency during the summer is never a good thing and setting the glass down and forgetting it ever existed so that he’ll have a clear head for the same reason.

“Oh good, Severus, you’re here,” the headmaster says after quickly vanishing the soot off of his two-toned bright pink robes and Severus regretfully abandons his undrunk tumbler of scotch, “Miss Harriet Potter seems to have performed a rather extreme feat of accidental magic upon her aunt and has subsequently run away from her aunt and uncle’s home.” Severus feels his blood run cold. “The ministry is already dealing with the issue of her aunt, and smoothing over any tensions this may have caused with her muggle relatives, but I have been asked to take lead on the task of finding young Harriet and making sure that she is relocated to a safe location for the rest of the summer. Some ministry officials will be aiding us in this endeavour, but I thought the two of you would be well suited in helping locate her.”

“Of course,” Minerva says from behind him, but Severus is already heading for the fireplace, mentally running through a checklist of all the places she could have gone to. He knew that the Weasleys were out of the country at the moment, but she could have gone to Granger’s parent’s home in London, or possibly the home of one of her other dorm-mates. It is also possible that she would head to either Diagon Alley or King’s Cross Station in order to take the commuter train from Platform 7 3/10 to Hogsmeade in the morning. 

“Provided she wouldn’t mind the use of her fireplace, I’ll floo to Arabella Figg’s residence in Surrey and check the area and then proceed to London where I can check King’s Cross and Diagon Alley,” he says, and Minerva nods.

“I will check with the parents of Miss Granger, and if needed, with the Browns, Patils, or Longbottoms.”

Fifteen minutes later Severus finds himself in a play park in Little Whinging, trying to subtly cast locating charms for Miss Potter while also facing off against a rather large and unfriendly stray dog.

“Shoo,” he grumbles as the dog stands between him and the entrance of the park and growls low in its throat. Severus resists the urge to roll his eyes, and casts another locating charm, which shows nothing, and lets out a low growl of frustration as he tries to head for the street. The dog bares its teeth at him, and Severus is  _ not  _ about this right now. “Get. I have a missing child that I’m trying to find you irritating mutt.”

He side-steps the dog, and stalks down the street in the direction of Privet Drive, half tempted to go and give Petunia and her doubtlessly equally infuriating husband a piece of his mind, when the Merlin-forsaken dog decides to follow him.

“Oh for--” his exclamation at his reaction to being followed by the animal is cut off when Albus’ phoenix patronus appears in front of him.

“Minister Fudge located the girl and ensured that she is secure in a room at the Leaky Cauldron, where she will remain for the rest of the summer.”

Severus is struck simultaneously with a sense of relief that the girl has been located and has remained far, far away from Sirius Black, and a brand-new sense of discontent about her new temporary lodgings. Sure, if she stays at the Leaky for the rest of the summer she’ll be safely ensconced in the wizarding world, and therefore far away from Black, and Albus can have some of his people keep a subtle eye on her. But honestly, a pub, even a well-traveled and reputable pub like the Leaky Cauldron, is rather far from Severus’ opinion of a reasonable location for a thirteen-year-old omega to spend several weeks alone. But knowing Albus, the arrangements have already been made and the old man’s opinion on the matter won’t be budged. Irritated, he turns on his heel and disapparates.

It’s not long before Severus is knocking on the door of one of the rooms at the Leaky Cauldron, relief filling him when he finally sets eyes on the girl.

“Professor Snape!” she exclaims, and he lifts a single eyebrow at her.

“Astute as always Miss Potter,” he drawls, and the girl flushes slightly before stepping out of the way of the door frame.

“Um, do you want to come in, Professor?” she asks, and he nods, stepping in and glancing around the room. The bed and wardrobe are accompanied by a small table with two chairs, and a loveseat beneath the room’s sole window. He spots a kettle and a basket with tea bags on the table, and makes his decision. He walks over to the table and taps his wand to the kettle to set it to boiling, and gestures at the table.

“Let us sit, Miss Potter. I am glad to see that you had at least some sense in that head of yours as evidenced by your decision to stick solely to strictly-magical areas since your flight from your aunt and uncle’s, but I am questioning why exactly you thought it was a good idea to be running around at night when Sirius Black of all people is on the loose?”

The girl’s brows furrow, her expression seemingly torn between confusion, irritation, and exhaustion, but sits herself down at the table nevertheless, and accepts the cup of tea Severus pours her before sitting down himself.

“Well, I didn’t know that Black was a wizard when I ran away,” she begins, and Severus feels that knot of dread return to his stomach, “and Ron and Hermione are both out of the country so I can’t go to them, and I thought I was going to be expelled so I decided to go to London and then I accidentally called the Knight Bus, so that was just a convenient accident, and when I arrived I ran straight into the Minister, and now I’m here, and apparently not going to be expelled.”

Severus pinches the bridge of his nose, unravels that tangled mess of information she just threw at him, and then takes a long sip of tea. Tea is good. Tea isn’t going to put him into an early grave.

“I suppose I’ll start with asking you why on Earth you thought that you were going to be expelled?”

Harriet stares at him like  _ he’s  _ the idiot.

“Because I blew up my aunt. Fudge said that I wasn’t going to be expelled over it when I saw him, but last year when a house elf levitated a pudding in my aunt’s kitchen I was sent an official warning, and I didn’t even  _ do _ that, so I thought I was going to be expelled, even if I really didn’t mean to blow up Aunt Marge.”

“A pity it wasn’t Petunia.” Severus mutters, and pointedly ignores the curious look Harriet shoots him at that comment, “Technically, you shouldn’t have gotten a warning for the elf magic, though the fact that there was apparently a house elf in your kitchen is a question I will be returning to on a later date. Accidental magic, even at your age, when it is uncommon to have outbursts, is not an expellable offence. It’s a natural reaction for young witches and wizards to have to heightened emotions or stressful situations, though it is a less common reaction after one starts their magical schooling and they gain a stronger sense of control over their magic. At your age it tends to only happen when the witch or wizard in question is in an extreme situation or they are an uncommonly powerful witch or wizard, and thus take longer to develop a complete sense of control over their magic. I do not know the details of what caused you to blow up your aunt, but considering the way your magic expressed itself, I would guess that your outburst was due to a combination of the two reasons.”

Harriet keeps her eyes glued firmly to her cup of tea, but Severus notices a faint blush across her cheeks at his implied compliment. 

“She said some really horrid things about my mum and dad,” she mumbles, “and Uncle Vernon was egging her on, and they’re making me pretend that I go to a reform school for criminal girls and Aunt Marge keeps on asking how much they beat me there, and then to hear her call my parents those things…” she trails off, and it takes Severus a moment to realize that while his facial expression is still composed, his fury at Petunia and her good-for-nothing husband is most likely coming through with his scent. He takes a few calming breaths, and settles his body’s reactions by focusing on his occlumency shields until he sees Harriet relax slightly into her chair. Fuck. He can’t let his instincts and his temper get the better of him like that, especially when in close quarters with a young omega, who will have a much stronger read on the emotions in his scent and a much stronger instinctual reaction to them.

“I apologize for my reaction, Miss Potter,” he says, ending the silence, and barrels forward before she has a chance to respond, “I will be having a discussion with the headmaster in regards to your relatives, but in the meantime, let us move to the topic of Sirius Black.”

She tilts her head at him. “What about him? I know he killed a bunch of people and supported Volde--”

“Don’t say the name!” He hisses, and she looks surprised at his outburst.

“...but why? Dumbledore says it,” and Severus wants to bash his head against the wall because of how far in the dark this girl is being kept.

“Dumbledore calls him by his name because he’s one of the most powerful wizards alive today, and has no reason to fear him or the consequences of saying his name aloud. During the war, there was a taboo curse upon the name, and anyone who said it would summon the Dark Lord or his supporters to them, oftentimes resulting in brutal murders.” The girl look pale, and Severus sighed. It was late, and now was not the time to get into the events of the war. He poured more tea into both of their mugs, and opened the tin of biscuits that had appeared when the kettle started to boil. “If you wish, we can discuss the war at a later date. For now, I request that you select an epitaph to use when referring to the Dark Lord. Now, back on the topic of Sirius Black. You know that he’s a mass murder, and a former Death Eater, that is correct?”

She nods, and he continues, “Black was revealed to be the Dark Lord’s spy in Dumbledore’s camp at the end of the last war,” he starts, and takes a sip of his tea while debating how to break the rest of the story to the girl in the least awful way he can manage. “Do you know what the Fidelius Charm is?”

“I don’t think I’ve heard of it before.”

“It’s a very complex charm that hides a secret--most commonly the location of a building or an object--inside a specific being. That person, the Secret Keeper, becomes the only person able to reveal the secret of the thing being charmed,” when she nods to indicate that she understands the concept he continues. “When your family went into hiding after you were born, they used the Fidelius Charm to hide their location from the Dark Lord. Sirius Black was your father’s best friend at school,” he was unable to completely suppress his sneer, but she seems to ignore it, “and your parents chose him to be both your godfather and their Secret Keeper.”

It takes a moment for the words to sink in, but Severus can tell the moment that they do, as the girl’s face crumples and her scent projects misery.

“He--he betrayed my parents to Vol--You-Know-Who?” she asks, looking up at him with huge, watery eyes, and he nods, hating that he has to be the one to tell her this, but unwilling to make her into an easy target by keeping her ignorant.

She bursts into tears. Severus, for all that he’s a head of house and has to deal with crying students on a semi-regular basis, never quite knows what to do with himself when it occurs. This time, he hesitantly reaches out and places a hand upon the girl’s shoulder, giving it a gentle squeeze.

“I am sorry that I had to tell you this Harriet,” he begins, and conjures a handkerchief to pass to her, “but I do so not to upset you, but so you can go forward this year armed with information that will help keep you safe.” She sniffles again, but wipes her eyes and nods. He nudges her tea and biscuits towards her, and she picks up a piece of shortbread.

“I-I understand, professor,” she says, “thank you for telling me.”

He nods, and pushes forward and away from Black and her parents. “I have been told that you will be staying here for the rest of the summer. While I would not consider this to be the ideal location for your safety at the moment, I daresay it may benefit you to spend some time immersed in part of the magical community that is not also a boarding school.” This statement causes her to smile, which in turn makes him feel slightly better about the whole situation. “However, you are still a young omega who is staying unaccompanied in a pub for over a fortnight while a psychopath who is likely after you is on the loose, so I would greatly appreciate it if you would allow me to ward your rooms for you.”

This seems to have peaked her interest, even though she flinched when he mentioned the whole murderous psychopath thing.

“Warding?” she asks as she nods her assent, and he nods, getting up from the table.

“Warding is an extremely practical field of magic, and one that you will have the opportunity to learn more about this upcoming year depending on the electives that you chose. Are you taking Ancient Runes?” he asks.

“Yeah. That, Care of Magical Creatures, and Divination,” she says, and he clenches his jaw in an attempt to avoid a reaction to all the potential negative outcomes of her taking Divination with Sybill Trelawney.

“Very well. Pay attention to what I’m doing, and I’ll explain the wards I’m putting up as I go,” he says, and explains the purpose of each of the wards and how he’s casting them as he goes.

By the time he finally makes it to his own bed, Harriet having been safely tucked away in a temporarily near-impenetrable inn room, he can see the earliest beams of light in the water of the lake outside his window. It does not take long for him to fall asleep.


	4. Year 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone and sorry for the delay on the chapter! February tends to be both a bad month for me depression wise and a really busy month at work, so all my spoons have been going towards my career and making sure that I actually like, go to the grocery store, and writing has fallen a bit to the wayside. That being said, here's a new chapter, and thank you to everyone who has left kudos, subscribed, and/or commented
> 
> Additionally, I use some quotes from The Prisoner of Azkaban near the end of this chapter, so if you recognize the words its because it's a quote from the text.

It’s not a secret that Severus Snape does not like Remus Lupin. The man was spineless and had a blind loyalty to Dumbledore that rubbed Severus the wrong way, and he also almost  _ ate _ Severus when they were sixteen. (Severus has long since acknowledged the fact that Lupin was as much a victim to Black’s ‘prank’ as he was, but that didn’t get rid of the nightmares that have lasted to this day, or change the fact that Lupin forgave Black and Pettigrew after less than a fortnight). The man was far too happy to go along with the actions and opinions of his friends and companions even if he knew they were wrong, even if the actions harmed others. He disappeared from the country after the Potters were murdered, abandoning a girl he supposedly viewed as a niece to her magic-hating muggle relatives without even checking in once. He also happened to be another alpha.

Severus would deny until his dying day that Lupin being another alpha was one of the primary reasons for his dislike of the other man after all this time, because Severus was  _ not  _ a man ruled by his instincts, but Severus would be lying to himself.

That being said, Severus couldn’t help but be begrudgingly--silently--grateful to the other alpha and his decision to ride upon the Hogwarts Express to the castle instead of flooing or apparating in like the rest of the professors after his message about dementors on the train is sent to the castle.

Because Merlin, there were sodding  _ dementors _ on the train, and more than that, there was a dementor in the same train compartment as Harriet Potter, the-girl-who-lived-through-enough-traumatic-events-for-ten-lifetimes, and unsurprisingly, the experience caused her to faint. And ask about a woman that she had heard screaming. Severus desperately hoped that the girl was not recalling her mother’s murder, but had a feeling that the hope was in vain.

It didn’t take long however, for his momentary gratitude towards Lupin’s existence to be eclipsed by the feeling of fury tinted with a little bit of old embarrassment and resentment that colored all his thoughts of the other man when he dressed a boggart of him up as Augusta Longbottom in front of half of the third years. It was exactly the sort of thing that Lupin, Black, Potter, and Pettigrew would have found uproariously funny back when they were all attending Hogwarts together, something that a reasonable instructor would deem unreasonable yet most of the Hogwarts staff turned a blind and amused eye on.  But no. According to Albus and Lupin and Minerva it was all in good fun, and he was being unreasonable for being angered by the whole debacle. 

What was worse is that he also felt a little bit bad about the fact that his treatment of Longbottom turned him into the boy’s dementor, but there was little he could do to amend his treatment of the boy without a) the boy developing an ability to brew potions in a way that would not result in death or injury overnight, b) the boy developing some self confidence, and c) Severus not being beholden to play a part in front of the children of the “former” Death Eaters that attended the school. 

(Severus never wanted to be a teacher, but at some point in the last decade he had come to actually like teaching, and it would be nice if he could maybe someday actually  _ act _ like he enjoyed his profession.)

It’s once again Halloween, and Severus isn’t quite sure if he should be feeling a sense of relief or foreboding when he discovers Miss Potter wandering the halls while he goes to deliver Lupin his dose of Wolfsbane. On one hand, at least Black can’t snatch up her off the streets of the village if she isn’t in the village, on the other, nothing good can come from Harriet Potter of all children being left to her own devices while all her friends are enjoying the village on Halloween of all days.

“Hello, Miss Potter,” he says, and she gives him a half-hearted smile and glances at the smoking goblet in his hand.

“Hullo Professor,” she says in return, “what’s that?” He bites down the urge to actually answer the question because Merlin forbid the children be aware of the fact that they live in a castle with a werewolf--thank you, Albus--and lowers the goblet enough for her to take a look inside of it.

“Let me ask you the same question,” he says, and she takes a good look at the potion, which was a matte pewter in color and constantly emitted pale blue smoke and the odor of the plant for which it was named. She looked at it closely, and eventually looked back up at him and shrugged.

“I dunno, Professor, it certainly doesn’t look like anything we’ve covered in class.” He suppressed a chuckle and gave her a small smirk.

“Well I would certainly think not, Miss Potter. It’s a potion most would not learn how to brew until they were studying for their mastery. The only students to have brewed it at this school under my tenure have been 7th year NEWT students using it as the subject for their independent research projects.”

“Why won’t you tell me what it is then, if you know that I wouldn’t know what it was?” 

“Because,” he drew out the word, trying to think of the best way to nudge her in the right direction to figure out Lupin’s condition on her own, but honestly not knowing how to do so in a manner a Gryffindor might actually pick up on, “the potions I brew for staff member’s conditions is not something I am at liberty to tell students.” She nods, furrowing her eyebrows a little while appearing to try to put together the puzzle pieces in her head. Good. Merlin only knows that Lupin’s lycanthropy is a better mystery for her to focus on than the mass-murdered out to get her.

“Now, I must go and deliver this, but if you would so desire, you could join me in my office for tea later this afternoon while your friends are all still in the village.” Her face lights up, and Severus knows that it was the correct thing to offer.

Later that evening, while he’s roaming the castle searching for Black and seething over the possibility that Lupin had helped him enter the castle, he is even more firm in his belief that taking tea with the girl was a wise idea. She had asked him more questions about the warding he had done on her rooms at the Leaky Cauldron over the summer, and he had ended up lending her an introductory text on the subject before escorting her to the entrance hall to meet her friends as they returned from the village just in time for the feast. Thus, she had been safely either in his office or the great hall during the most likely time for Black to have entered the castle, and it was unlikely that Black would have lingered on the grounds after failing to breach the tower.

The following weeks proceeded in a manner that would be considered alarming at any other magical school but was honestly pretty standard at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in recent years. Trelawny repeatedly predicted the death of one of her students and Albus did nothing about it. There was a fourteen-year-old running around the castle in multiple places at once because someone--cough, Albus and Minerva, cough--thought it would be a good idea to give an overly swotty teenager a time travel device so she could go to more classes. Severus covered Lupin’s classes during the full moon, and nobody asked how he was doing teaching two core classes to the entire student body. Harriet Potter managed to almost die by either having her soul sucked out or falling from a great height during a Quidditch match. Said child also managed to sneak out of the castle, probably because Lupin gave her some sort of “family heirloom” that was really just another troublemaking tool during one of the patronus lessons he started to give her. This train of events culminated on Christmas day, when Harriet Potter was anonymously gifted a Firebolt.

“Professor Snape, can I talk to you after dinner?” the girl quietly asked him before sitting down for Christmas dinner, and he nodded, before waving her off to go and sit with her friends. He surreptitiously watched as Miss Granger beamed at the girl when she sat down between her and the youngest Mister Weasley, who shot a dirty look first at the pair of them and then at Severus himself. He pushed the matter from his mind until after everyone was done with pudding and crackers, and actually smiled when Minerva asked Sybill about a mad axe-man in the entrance hall when the woman made a fuss about Miss Potter’s companions rising from the table at the same time.

He excused himself a few minutes later, and Miss Potter followed him out of the hall, where he lifted an eyebrow and looked at her expectantly.

“Well?”

Harriet grimaced, before starting to speak.

“Someone sent me a Firebolt for Christmas,” she said, and Severus felt his heart skip a beat, “and I didn’t think anything of it at first, and Ron thinks its fine, but Hermione pointed out that since it didn’t say who it was from and since I’ve almost died in a Quidditch match at least once a year since I came here it was probably from Sirius Black. And while I don’t quite know if I think that’s true she did have a point because I was all ready to go try it out on the pitch, and I remembered what you said about Black trying to get to me and also about not doing anything stupid without a competent adult around I figured it made sense to ask you if you could check and see if there’s anything wrong with it.”

And in that moment, Severus was deeply relieved that his words seemed to have made some sort of impression on the girl, because there was no doubt in his mind that that Firebolt had been sent to her by Black as a rather well-thought out murder attempt.

More time went by, and Severus was relieved to learn that the Firebolt was not a murder attempt, though it did make him wonder who decided to anonymously send a thirteen-year-old a professional racing broom. He was still nervous about the time that Miss Potter spent alone with Lupin learning how to cast a patronus, especially after Black’s second break in, though he agreed that it was a skill that the girl would benefit from learning.

It’s almost the end of term when he stops by Lupin’s office to deliver his dose of Wolfsbane when he finds it unoccupied by the man with a real-time map of the grounds and occupants of Hogwarts lying on the desk, with the dot labeled “Remus Lupin” running into the tunnel that leads to the shrieking shack. He felt his blood run cold. The shrieking shack was the perfect place for Black to be hiding. Few people knew about it, and it had a direct tunnel leading onto the school’s grounds.

“Merlin’s balls,” he mutters under his breath, taking a look at the setting sun, and casting a quick anti-spilling charm on the goblet before running after the man. He made it to the willow in record time, and prodded the knot that froze the tree’s branches with a levitated stone and made his way into the tunnel, snatching up Potter’s invisibility cloak as he came across it, and focused on the task at hand as he tried not to think back to a different full moon night he spent in this blasted tunnel as a teenager.

“Snape glimpsed me though, at the end of the tunnel. He was forbidden by Dumbledore to tell anybody, but from that time on he knew what I was…” he could hear Lupin and Black telling the tale of that night to an audience, and mentally swore when he caught a whiff of frightened omega girl and heard Mister Weasley ask if that’s why he hated them. Steeling himself, he opened the door, threw off the cloak, and stepped into the room, placing himself between Black and Lupin and the three students.

“That would be part of the reason Mister Weasley,” he sneered, pointing his wand at Lupin and shooting Miss Potter and Miss Granger a look that he hoped conveyed that he wanted them to stay put when they tried to shuffle around him to get a better view of the criminals. He explained how he got down to the tunnel and how he’d been trying to convince the headmaster that Lupin had been aiding Black for months, when Lupin asked what was probably the stupidest question to ever come out of his mouth.

“You fool,” he had the gall to say, “Is a schoolboy grudge worth putting an innocent man back inside Azkaban?” How dare Lupin pin this down as a  _ schoolboy grudge _ , yes, he hated Black for the way he and Potter had treated him throughout their time at Hogwarts, but Black had proved himself capable of murder as a teenager when he sent him to his death at the claws of a werewolf, and willingly gave the Dark Lord the information that lead to Lily’s death. 

“A  _ schoolboy grudge _ didn’t kill my best friend,” he hissed, and things went to hell in a handbasket quickly from there. Black shot towards him, and Severus’ incarcerous he was about to shoot at Lupin went wide as he shoved the two girls further behind him and as far from Black as he could get them in the tiny room. Black snatched Weasley’s wand, and before Severus could put up a shield he was hit simultaneously by Lupin’s expelliarmus and Black’s stunner, and everything went black.

He came to lying in a heap on the ground near the whomping willow, Weasley lying nearby, his broken leg splinted, with neither girl, the werewolf, nor Black anywhere to be found. Ignoring the throbbing headache and the way his chest hurt from being hit by a stunner at close range, he illuminated his wand and looked around nearby, where he eventually caught sight of three crumpled figures on the shores of the lake, with dementors gliding away from their location. Once again, he felt his heart drop to the pit of his stomach, and he sprinted towards the two girls and Black, all lying in unconscious heaps. 

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he mumbled, shooting an incarcerous at the form of Black before checking over Harriet and then Miss Granger for any sign of being kissed. After a few moments and a quick diagnostic charm, he let out a relieved breath as he realized that they were both just unconscious. “Thank Merlin,” he sighed, before conjuring stretchers and levitating the girls and Black up to the castle, collecting Weasley along the way.

The next few hours passed in a blur of being checked over by Poppy, dealing with Fudge, a brief moment of elation at learning that he was going to be recognized for capturing Black that was quickly tempered by the knowledge that he would likely have to one day explain his role in recapturing a valued servant to the Dark Lord when he eventually returned, that was then completely squashed when he found out that Black had escaped.

Learning from Dumbledore that Black was innocent of betraying Lily and her husband and that the headmaster has orchestrated the outlaw’s escape by using two teenage girls to do the time-travelling dirty work for him did not in any way, shape, or form improve his mood.

It was once again the last day of term when Severus heard a knock on his office door. He wasn’t even entirely surprised this year to see Miss Potter standing in the doorway when he instructed her to enter.

“Good afternoon, Miss Potter,” he greeted, and gestured to one of the chairs in front of his desk, which she sat in while he tapped his wand to the kettle on a bookshelf next to his desk. “Tea?”

“Yes, please Professor,” she said, and remained quiet as he prepared cups for both of them.

“What are you here to discuss, Miss Potter?” he asked, though he suspected he already had an idea of the answer.

“Well, on the full moon when we were in the shack,” she began, and yes, Severus knew  _ exactly  _ where this was going, “you mentioned Sirius killing your best friend. And I know you and my dad didn’t like each other, so I was wondering if you didn’t mind telling me what that was about?” She asked, and he sighed, and took a sip of his tea, and decided to just tell her.

“You are right in your statement that your father and I did not like each other,” he began, and kept his occlumency shields tight around him as he spoke in order to keep his emotions and scent steady, “but from the time we were nine to the end of our fifth year of Hogwarts, your mother was my best, and oftentimes only, friend.” She opened her mouth as if to say something, but he raised a hand and she took a sip of her tea instead.

“I will not go into details as to why our friendship ended at this time. I made a mistake, and she ended our friendship because of it. Despite the fact that we could not truly be considered friends for several years before her death, we had begun to reconcile in the last few months of her life, and she will never not be my childhood best friend.” He said, and sat back in his chair to observe the girl.

She didn’t say anything, not for a long few moments as she processed the information. She took another sip of her tea, and eventually gave him a small smile.

“Thank you for telling me, sir,” she said, and he gave her a small smile in return.


	5. Year 4, Part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's new chapter time! I think this will be the first of three chapters for Harriet's fourth year. As always, many thanks to everyone who has left kudos, commented, bookmarked, or just took the time to read this fic!

The second that he hears the words “Triwizard Tournament” Severus Snape stops trying to convince himself that maybe the 1994-1995 school year will be as safe and normal as a school year at a magical boarding school can ever be. 

“We’re hosting  _ what _ ?” he asks, hoping that somehow he just so happened to mishear the words Albus uttered at the end of the last staff meeting before everyone breaks for the summer, and by the looks on Minerva and Poppy’s faces, he most certainly did not mishear the headmaster.

“The Triwizard Tournament!” Albus says, the damnable twinkle in his eye, “There are still some loose ends to be tied up, but select members of Beauxbatons’ and Durmstrang’s upper class years and staff will be joining us for the year starting on Halloween. There will be three tasks throughout the school year, a Yule Ball at Christmas, and we expect that it will be a wonderful opportunity to create new bonds of friendship between the students of the three most prominent magical schools in Europe!”

Severus and Minerva take a moment to look each other dead in the eye, and without using legilimency, he knew that they were thinking the same thing: there was no way that this would end well, and there was no way that Harriet Potter wouldn’t get tangled up in the mess.

Having learned from last summer, Severus actually does take a few weeks off from his personal research projects and goes abroad. He spends a week in Rome, and then a week in Madrid, and when he arrives back in Britain to news of a Death Eater riot at the Quidditch World Cup and a letter from Harriet Potter, he’s really glad that he took the chance to get away for a little bit while he still could, because he suspected that the little bit of freedom he’s had since the Dark Lord fell and he only had one master to answer to was going to be coming to an end very soon.

_ Dear Professor Snape, _

_ I hope that you’ve been enjoying your holiday, and I am sorry to bother you, but you said that I could contact you if something was wrong, and I’m concerned about this. I woke up last night from a vivid and concerning dream about Peter Pettigrew and Voldemort, and my scar was hurting. In the dream Voldemort and Wormtail were talking about someone they killed, and then they were talking about trying to kill me, and then I think they murdered an old man. _

_ The last time my scar hurt like this was when Voldemort was at Hogwarts, and while I don’t think it’s possible for him to be in Surrey, I don’t know what to do. Is it normal for curse scars to hurt years afterwards? I also mentioned this to Sirius in my last letter to him, but I don’t know what he knows about curse scars, and I’m afraid that he’d come back to the country or do something rash if he was worried. _

_ Yours sincerely, _

_ Harriet Potter _

Reading the letter only increased his sense of dread, and Severus knew that he needed to go talk to Dumbledore.

It was Tuesday, and Severus is not looking forward to this meeting, no matter how alarming he found the letter about Harriet’s dream to be. However, he was a good little spy and came when Dumbledore called, and so he found himself walking into the backroom of the Hogshead at eight in the evening, a scowl fixed firmly to his face.

“What the hell is  _ he  _ doing here, Albus?” Black practically spat when he saw Severus enter the room. Severus just rolls his eyes, and pulls the letter out of the inner breast pocket of his cloak before sitting down at the small table, pushing his chair as far away from his former classmate’s as possible.

“I’m here, Black, because Miss Potter sent me a letter about her dream and the accompanying pain in her scar, as I am one of the few adults she will actually occasionally go to for help,” he scowls at the man, and Black scowled right back, crossing his arms.

“I don’t see why she’d go to  _ you _ at all.”

“Maybe it has something to do with--”

“Gentlemen, how about we keep this meeting short and just discuss what we came here to discuss,” Albus interjected, the twinkle in his eye absent for once as he looked over his two former pupils. Severus nodded his assent, and refused to look either of the other men that were sitting at the table with him directly in the eye.

“Sirius, did Harriet give you any details about her dream in her letter to you?” Albus asked, and Sirius pulled out his own letter, shaking his head in the negative.

“She only said that her scar hurt the night before, and that the last time it had happened it was because Voldemort--” Severus hisses, the mostly-dormant dark mark on his arm twinging in pain, and Black shoots him a dirty look, “--was at Hogwarts. She mostly seemed like she wanted reassurance that he wasn’t anywhere nearby, and wanted to know if it was normal for scars to hurt years later.”

Severus feels a small bit of warmth in his chest when he realizes just how much more information the girl had written in the letter for him opposed to the letter to her godfather. He also can’t help but let a small amount of smugness leak into his voice when he relays what he knows to the other two men, savoring the way Black’s jaw clenched.

“I don’t understand why she would tell  _ you _ all that Sniv--”

“Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I’ve been a reliable adult in her life Black.”

“That is enough gentlemen,” Albus interrupts, and Severus bites his tongue, wishing he had gotten a drink from Aberforth before coming into the back room for this conversation, “I think the more important issue at the moment is what we will do with this information now that we have it.” From there he delves into the details of Harriet’s dream, and what it might mean in conjunction with the rising amounts of Death Eater activity--namely the riot at the world cup-- and the possible identities of the murdered individual. He is trying to end the meeting when Severus opens his mouth to speak and Black beats him to the punch.

“What about Harriet?” Black interjects, and Severus can’t even be irritated about being cut off because that’s what he wants to know as well.

“What about the girl?” Dumbledore asks, and Severus pulls his occlumency walls a little tighter around him so he doesn’t say something rash to the man.

“What should we tell her?” Black asks, and Dumbledore temples his fingers together in front of his face.

“I think,” he slowly says, “that we should tell her not to worry, but to let one of us know if she has any more odd dreams or pains in her scar.” 

Severus does not yell at his employer because he’s been around this block before, and knew it was futile. For all that Albus Dumbledore views himself as the savior of the light, he was just as much a chessmaster as the Dark Lord, and like the Dark Lord, liked to keep his pawns in the dark.

Black doesn’t seem overly thrilled at the pronouncement either.

“Do you not think that someone should mention that the dream sounds like it was a vision?” he asks, and Albus just shakes his head.

“I do not wish to worry or overburden the girl.”

“Because keeping her in the dark is so much safer than keeping her well informed,” he finds himself muttering, and he receives a look from both of the other men, and rolls his eyes at Black, who was acting like Severus was disagreeing with him instead of also wanting to keep Harriet safe and well-informed. 

“Well, if that is all gentlemen, then I shall be leaving,” the headmaster says, rising from his chair and fastening his summer-weight cloak around his shoulders. Giving them each a nod, he exits the room, and Severus rises from his chair as well, determined not to be in the same room as Black for any longer than absolutely necessary.

He’s about to leave so he can apparate home when Black’s voice catches him by surprise.

“If you go projecting your Lily stuff onto Harriet I swear to Merlin I’ll--”

Severus feels his temper flare, and he whirls back around to face the other man, his metaphorical hackles raised.

“My Lily stuff? What exactly do you mean by that Black?” The look Black shoots him is pure venom, and Severus can feel a growl building in his chest and he tries his hardest to suppress it, not wanting to let Black completely overwhelm his cool.

“Well we all knew you were panting after her Snivellous, it was pretty obvious”

Severus barks out a laugh, harsh and grating “You do realize that I’m straight and Lily was an alpha, or are you really as stupid as you look? And even if I had fancied her, what on Earth would that have to do with her daughter?” 

“No, but, wait just one minute--”

“No Black. Harriet is first and foremost my student, and the fact that I don’t dislike her as much as I dislike many of her housemates is solely due to the fact that she didn’t inherit many of her father’s more detestable character traits, and has nothing to do with any feelings I most certainly did  _ not _ possess for her mother twenty years ago.” With that he spins around on the heel of his boot and leaves, his blood boiling, not trusting himself not to curse Black if he was in the same room as the mutt any longer.

The next day he sends a quick note off to Harriet, telling her not to worry for the time being, and to contact him or the headmaster if she has any more strange dreams or pains in her scar, and that he will talk to her in person when the school year begins. 

It does not take long for September to roll around, and once again Severus is occupying the same castle as a new Defence Against the Dark Arts professor that he cannot stand. Alastor Moody was a paranoid bastard of a man before he lost his eye and leg, and had only gotten worse as the years progressed, and the fact that he hadn’t been the auror to arrest Severus after the Dark Lord’s fall did nothing to put Severus in his good books. Severus’ irritation over the whole situation is not helped by the fact that Moody did  _ not  _ smell right, and like three years ago, Albus is once again not taking his concerns seriously.

“I realize that the man is a beta,” Severus gripes one evening over a glass of scotch with Minerva in her quarters, “but it’s not like I’m being irrational about the whole smell thing.”

The woman hums, and Severus shoots her a questioning look.

“Are you sure he smells different?” she asks, and Severus nods in affirmation, and she continues, “It’s just that none of us can smell anything odd about him, and before you get all in a twist about it I am well aware of the fact that your sense of smell is more acute than a beta’s, but you can’t blame us for being a bit skeptical.” At this Severus lets out a sigh and sinks back in his chair before taking another sip of his drink.

“I know that it sounds odd to you, but the last time this happened Quirrell had the Dark Lord sticking out of the back of his head, so I feel my paranoia is justified.”

They let the matter rest and Severus decides to bring it up again with Albus the next day.

It’s during the second fourth year Slytherin/Gryffindor potions class of the term that he tells Harriet to stay after class when she knocks over a vial of salamander’s blood all over her workstation so he can actually talk to her about their summer correspondence. Mister Weasley shoots him a glare when he says this to the girl and lingers at his table as the class is leaving, causing him to suppress the need to roll his eyes at his antics.

“You are excused, Mister Weasley,” he drawls, and the boy crosses his arms, ignoring the way Miss Granger grabs hold of the sleeve of his robe and tugs him after her and stays still.

“It was an accident!” he bursts out, and Severus crosses his arms in front of his chest.

“And that will be ten points from Gryffindor Mister Weasley. Would you like to leave or would you like to stay and discuss a detention for insubordination?” he asks, and the boy scowls at him.

“Come on, Ron,” Miss Granger hisses, and when Severus lifts an eyebrow, he begrudgingly turns and exits the room, and Severus turns to Harriet.

“If I am not mistaken, you have a free period?” he asks, and Harriet nods, and he gestures to the door to his office. “Then come with me to my office and we will have that talk.”

A few minutes later she was sitting in the more comfortable of the two student chairs in front of his desk, a cup of tea in front of her, eating a biscuit.

“I apologize for the subterfuge in arranging this chat, but there will be a number of guests in the castle this year that I am concerned might cause trouble if they think I feel anything more than indifference towards you.”

She gives him a puzzled look, “why would people from Beauxbatons or Durmstrang care if you like or dislike one of your students?” she asks, and Severus hates just how little she knows of this brewing war she is already a part of. Instead of going down that road, he asks her a question.

“What role did I play in the last war, Miss Potter?” he asks, and she looks at him for a moment before answering.

“I-I don’t know, professor,” she says, and he sets down his teacup.

“I was a spy, Miss Potter.” She looks at him with wide eyes.

“You spied on the Death Eaters?” she asks, her voice hushed, and he tilted his hand back and forth, and elaborated before she could get the wrong idea.

“Yes, and no. I am loyal to Dumbledore, and spied for him during the war. However, the Dark Lord and his followers are under the impression that I have been spying on Dumbledore on their behalf.”

“And so you have an image to maintain?” she asks, and Severus nods.

“Exactly. Professor Karkaroff, the headmaster of Durmstrang, is a former Death Eater, and since the school teaches the dark arts, not just how to defend against them, a number of Death Eaters and their sympathisers sent their children there instead of Hogwarts.

“Oh. And here I was thinking that this year would be mostly normal with just bits of fun when we got to watch the events,” she says, brows furrowing. “Not that I don’t appreciate you telling me this, professor, but was it that you wanted to talk about from my dream?”

Severus picks up a biscuit and eats half of it before he actually speaks.

“The headmaster, your godfather, and I talked this summer about your dream and the pain in your scar. Black and the headmaster did not wish to worry you, but I disagreed with their decision to withhold information from you,” he leant forward slightly, and made eye contact with the girl, “Your dream was not just a normal dream. We highly suspect that the dream was some sort of vision of the Dark Lord’s activities, and the pain you experienced only supports this theory. I tell you this so you know what to expect from any further dreams, and so that if or when those future dreams occur, you know to document what you can remember. It seems increasingly likely that the Dark Lord is to return sooner rather than later, and this information could be important.”

She nods, but the tense set of her jaw puts Severus on edge. He waits her out, and after a moment she pushes back her chair and starts to pace.

“Why don’t they want to tell me these things?” she asks, her volume and temper raising, “I don’t understand why they’re all like ‘I want to keep Harriet safe’ but also flat out lie to me about things that are happening to me! What if I had more of these dreams and didn’t know what they were? What if I watched someone die in one and didn’t know that it actually happened in real life? How’s that fair?” she asks, and Severus frowns.

“Miss Potter, while I agree that you should be given more information, hence why I am informing you myself, neither the headmaster nor you godfather are trying to do you harm.”

She huffs, rolling her eyes at him, only looking slightly sheepish when he lifts a solitary eyebrow. 

“Doesn’t mean that not telling me things won’t cause harm,” she grumbles, and honestly? Severus can’t argue that.

And then, once again, it’s Halloween. And because Severus Snape can’t catch a break, Harriet Potter’s name comes out of the Goblet of Fire, naming her the fourth Triwizard champion.


	6. Year 4, Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, many thanks to everyone who has read, commented, left kudos, and/or subscribed!

Because some higher power clearly decided at some point that Severus Snape’s life wasn’t allowed to be easy, Millicent Bulstrode goes into her first rut in the early hours of the morning on November 1st. He’s awoken at about 3:45 AM by a portrait of Wendolyn the Willful, a sorceress best known for her decision to scorn all potential husbands presented to her by her parents, instead going on to take over her father’s lordship after his death herself. Her main frame resides in the Slytherin common room, but her secondary frame in his quarters allows her to contact him on behalf of his students in the case of an emergency, or contact him on her own behalf in the case of a rager. When told that he was being summoned on the behalf of a seventh year prefect, he scowls but stumbles out of bed and into a heavy dressing gown and his boots, placing his wand in his pocket and striding down the hall towards the common room of his charges.

As he enters, he is hit with a wall of scent and knows immediately what had occurred. Millicent Bulstrode had just become the first alpha or omega student in her year to go into their first rut or heat cycle. He goes to collect the girl, or rather, young woman, from where she’s standing in the hallway, shooting wary glances at Miss Atwood, the prefect who had contacted him on Miss Bulstrode’s behalf. Miss Atwood, as a beta, could smell the scent of rut coming off of her classmate, but did not have an instinctual response to it, unlike an alpha or omega. Severus, as an alpha, had immediately placed mental barriers around the portion of his mind that had an instinctual reaction to the scent of another alpha in rut, once again being grateful of the control granted to him through his mastery of occlumency and legilimency. 

As he approaches, Miss Bulstrode begins to growl at him, and he suppresses his urge to roll his eyes, refusing to growl back, instead placing a gentle hand on the tall girl’s shoulder, and meeting her eyes, trying to project as much calm as possible.

“Miss Bulstrode. I am here to accompany you to one of the rut rooms in the hospital wing’s annex,” he says, and it takes a second, but she nods, taking a step forward before inhaling deeply, her eyes widening as she catches some sort of scent. Severus does not chuckle, knowing full well that she won’t appreciate it, in the beginning stages of rut as she is, and he can clearly remember his own first rut. It had been in the early spring of his fifth year, and Slughorn had had to bring him to the rut rooms as his head of house. He had nudged him through the dorms and common room, which suddenly contained all sorts of new smells, some  _ far  _ more appealing than others, trying to get him into a safe, private location before he completely lost himself to the rut . He remembered what it was like to suddenly be able to smell the nuances of the scents of his peers, smell their emotions much more acutely. He remembered what it was like to catch a whiff of an appealing omega’s scent in the common room for the first time and just being floored by how wonderful it had smelled, remembered wanting to go find the source, unsure of how he had never noticed it before, before being nudged along to the safe haven of the rut room by his head of house. Bringing himself back to reality, he ushered forward Miss Bulstrode, and when she turned to look at him he gave her an encouraging smile, and nudged her forward once again.

“I know that there are all sort of new things that you can read in the air right now, Miss Bulstrode, but if there is a particular scent that has caught your nose you can speak with the individual in a few days when you are no longer going into rut, like a civilized human being.”

The young woman blushes, but nods and steps forward, and like that, Severus is able to coax her to the hospital wing, where he brings her to one of the rooms, where Poppy is already waiting, presumably notified by a portrait herself. Millicent is much easier to guide through the halls than most other young alphas Severus has done this for, and is impressed by her self control.

“There you are, Miss Bulstrode,” he says, gesturing towards the room. “Madam Pomfrey will alert me when your rut has run its course, and I will come back so we can have a conversation on what this means for you.”

The girl nods, and for the first time all night, actually speaks.

“Thank you professor.”

He gives her a small smile and a pat on the shoulder, nods at Poppy, and turns around so he can go back to his rooms, where he can take a shower to wash the scent of another alpha’s rut off of him and drop his hastily erected occlumency barriers.

Not too long later, when he finds himself soaking in the large claw-foot tub in his quarters, his walls having already been dropped and the bit of growling he felt the need to do about having the scent of Miss Bulstrode’s rut on him out of his system, he takes a moment to just be grateful that Miss Bulstrode’s rut had happened today, and not a week ago.

As the first student in her class year to go into either rut or heat, Millicent Bulstrode just became the youngest of-age student at Hogwarts, and he knew for a fact that he was not the only professor worrying about the potential of one of the younger of-age alphas or omegas getting it into their head to enter the tournament and somehow getting their name drawn. It’s bad enough that Miss Potter’s name had somehow been placed in the cup and then drawn as a fourth champion, if he had had more than one student that was below the sixth year in the tournament to worry about, let alone the possibility of Miss Potter and one of his snakes, he doesn’t know if he’d last the year or if he’d finally keel over due to stress alone. 

It was all well and good that Albus had put an age line around the cup, but all that did was prevent betas under the age of seventeen and alphas that had not had their first rut or omegas that had not yet had their first heat from entering. It did nothing to prevent presented alphas or omegas that did not have the necessary educations to not die in the tournament under their belts from entering, nor did it allow older alphas or omegas who had not yet presented but were more competent than their beta peers to enter.

He had heard endless amounts of grumbling about this from some of his students, particularly the older ones. Teenage betas tended to begrudge the fact that alphas and omegas had a non-set age at which they reached their majority. It was a universal fact, among the magical and non-magical communities alike, that an alpha or omega that had not yet gone through heat or rut was a child, and one that had was an adult. First heats and ruts tended to occur between the ages of fourteen and sixteen years of age, and prior to the event, alphas and omegas, whether they be three or eighteen, smelled like a child. It wasn’t a definable scent, they still had individual scents unique to them as people, but they did not yet smell ‘mature,’ as abstract as a concept as that may be. After, in addition to the heats or ruts they now experienced roughly once every three months, the more defined sense of smell, and the ability to enter a mating bond, they simply smelled like an adult to those around them. Betas, who did not have the same biological milestone were deemed as adults at an age that varied from culture to culture; in Wizarding Britain, it happened to be the age seventeen. 

While the older underage betas were grumbling about students younger than them being able to enter the tournament while they themselves were still unable, Severus also knew of both an alpha and an omega student over the age of seventeen that were also unable to enter the tournament, unlike their similarly-aged peers, which also caused a fair bit of grumbling from that party in addition to their already-present grumbling about being unable to apparate or perform magic outside of school.

All things said, despite not particularly wanting to be up at this hour of the morning, Severus found his bath to be a welcome reprieve and opportunity to get a few minutes to himself, completely and utterly removed from the grumblings of teenagers.

The previous night, when Harriet’s name had come out of the goblet of fire, Severus was ashamed to admit that he had almost went full-on angry alpha about her name being put in the goblet in the first place, it coming out of the goblet at all, and Harriet’s subsequent forced participation. His innate desire to keep his emotions under wraps in public and Minerva’s hand subtly digging her fingernails into his arm, giving him something to focus on, were the only things keeping him from just getting up and doing  _ something  _ to the very old magical artifact that would most definitely have legal repercussions for him to deal with. When he had actually been in the antechamber off the great hall with the contestants, ministry officials, and other teachers and heads and was able to smell the pungent odor of underage omega fear rolling off of Harriet in waves, it was all he could do to keep himself from wrapping the girl up in his cloak and ferrying her off to some far off place where she couldn’t be forced to participate in a death tournament. When Bagman and Crouch made it clear that she was to participate, no matter what, Harriet’s scared omega scent and Severus’ enraged alpha scent was joined by yet another angry alpha scent--Fleur Delacour’s. The young French woman had been angry both on her own behalf--it truly wasn’t fair that there was another competitor thrown into the mix--and also on behalf of Harriet, who everyone but Crouch and Bagman agreed should not have to participate. In her anger the young woman’s veela heritage was more prominent than ever, and while reflecting back on the evening from the confines of his bathtub, Severus pondered if the fearsome young woman would win the competition over the likes of Krum or Diggory, let alone Harriet.

Harriet. Who was fourteen and woefully unprepared for the tournament.

Harriet. Who, in his infinite wisdom and in a move that suggested that he actually gave a shit about fair play, Dumbledore had explicitly forbidden Severus from aiding in the tournament when he pulled the younger man aside last night after the debacle in the antechamber.

Harriet. Who Severus was going to do all he could to try and help anyway.

Sighing, Severus finished rinsing his hair and stood up from the bath, wrapping a towel around his waist and grabbing a second for his hair and already mourning the fleeting sense of peace he had gained from his early morning bath after the tournament related trouble last night and his lack of sleep caused by Miss Bulstrode’s rut that morning.

Severus doesn’t get a chance to talk with Harriet until Friday, and by the time he shows up for the Fourth Year Slytherin/Gryffindor Double Potions practical he can immediately tell that he was remiss in his decision to wait to talk to her until after her Friday class.

He stalks into the hallway in the middle of what appears to be some sort of duel between Mister Malfoy and Miss Potter, with Mister Goyle and Miss Granger being the unfortunate victims of their hexes.

“And what is all this noise about?” he asks in the quiet, deadly voice he uses when he’s particularly displeased with his students, as he tries to get a read on the situation. Harriet seems to have put quite a bit of power into her hex that hit Goyle straight in the face, causing numerous large boils to pop up, and Draco’s densaugeo seems to have hit Granger straight in her already unfortunately large front teeth. As he glances around the hallway, attempting to determine if there was a motive behind the impromptu duel, he notices the new badges that most of his Slytherins seem to be wearing, declaring Diggory the real Hogwarts champion, and denigrating Miss Potter.

He resists the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose, and, hating that he’s not in a position to do anything about the slander the girl he has become increasingly fond of is facing, turns to the injured parties.

“Hospital wing, Goyle,” he says after taking a moment to get a good look at the boy’s face, which is looking less like a human face by the minute, and bites back the urge to snap at the Weasley boy who seems to be intent on forcing Granger’s hands away from her face, where she’s trying to cover her rapidly-growing teeth.

Seeing the look on Harriet’s face, he bites back the nasty comment he truly wishes to make, and turns to the door of the classroom, opening the door, and barely sparing a glance at Granger as he tells her to “go to the hospital wing as well if you must, Miss Granger.”

He doesn’t miss the way that Mister Weasley pointedly does not sit by Harriet in his classroom, or the way Mister Malfoy flashes  _ POTTER STINKS  _ across the room at her, but ignores it in the way he finds himself doing increasingly often as the political tensions grow higher. 

He gets the class started on brewing the antidotes they’ve been working on for the past several weeks, and when Colin Creevy comes in to collect Harriet for  _ photographs _ of all things, he begrudgingly lets the girl go.

“Come back here once you are done, Miss Potter, so we can schedule a time for you to come back and complete the brewing of your antidote,” he says before she leaves with the excitable blond boy, and she nods.

“Yes, sir.”

Almost two hours later, Harriet returns, looking more frustrated with the day than she had before the photos.

“I’m sorry it took so long, professor. There was a wand weighing ceremony, and Rita Skeeter cornered me, and then there were photographs, which took far longer than it had any right to.” She looked decidedly displeased about the whole thing, but part of the statement concerned Severus.

“Did you say that Rita Skeeter cornered you?” he asks, and it clearly came out sharper than he meant it to because Harriet’s eyes snap up to meet his, and she nods.

“Yes, sir. I didn’t particularly want to speak with her, but she dragged me off into a broom cupboard to interview me and didn’t seem all too keen on actually listening to what I had to say. Professor Dumbledore rescued me from her.”

He purses his lips.

“I would avoid talking to her whenever possible from now on. She is a fiction writer disguised as a tabloid journalist disguised as a best-selling author, and she is vicious with her quill. Expect an unflattering article in either the Prophet or Witch Weekly within a week.” Harriet blanches, and Severus sighs, getting up from his desk and heading out of the classroom and out into the hall, gesturing for the girl to follow him.

He makes his way to the hidden door for the sitting room attached to his office and quarters that he has as a head of house, and stops before it.

“Saharan Horned Viper,” he says clearly, and smirks a little when the password registers to Harriet and she startles, a small smile appearing on her face as she glances down the hall towards the portrait of the snake she had befriended in her second year. He leads her into the room and she follows, and he doesn’t speak again until the door closes behind them.

“That is a password to this room that I expect you to keep between the two of us,” he begins, going to sit in one of the armchairs, and gesturing for her to sit on the sofa across from him, “as I informed you earlier in the year, I will be unable to publicly interact with you beyond my duties as a member of faculty this year, and when we do interact, I must keep it impersonal at best, and hostile at worse.”

“I remember,” she interrupts, and gives him an apologetic look before he continues.

“I have also been forbidden by the headmaster from helping you throughout the tournament.” Her face falls. “Because of this,” he continues, “I am granting you access to this room whenever you need somewhere private to go this year, be it to prepare yourself for the tasks, have an hour away from hostile peers, or to,” and at this he wordlessly summons a book from one of the shelves lining the walls, and places it on the coffee table in front of her, “read some books from my private library.”

She picks up the book, and she gives him the first genuinely happy smile that he’s seen from her since her name came out goblet when she reads the title:  _ The Triwizard Tournament, A Complete History _ .

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright folks! This chapter is the start of my getting deeper into the ABO worldbuilding I've had rattling around in my head for this fic since the start. There will be more to come in the next few chapters (it's one of the big focuses of the Year 4 chapters), so if you have any questions, they should hopefully be answered soon! Expect a big long end note at the end of the last Year 4 chapter (which I expect to be two chapters from now, so probably chapter 8 unless I write more than expected again) in which I will probably give a few more notes on ABO worldbuilding things that I can't figure out how to cohesively work into the fic. 
> 
> Also? I love Fleur. I feel like she's done so dirty in canon when she's regularly being portrayed as rather stuck up and shallow when she's also canonically enough of a badass to be chosen as champion, as well as having a spine of steel for having to deal with all the crap thrown at her by Molly and the non-Bill Weasley children after she and Bill get engaged. So expect to see more Fleur in the background of this fic because I love her.
> 
> See you again soon!


	7. Year 4, Part 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone! It's been a while, but life's been busy and I was struck by an idea for another fic and have been spending most of my writing time over the past couple of weeks working on it instead of this one. I've finally gotten through the part of this chapter that was giving me the most difficulty though, so here you are! As always, many thanks to everyone who has left kudos, commented, bookmarked, subscribed, and/or just took the time to read this! You mean the world to me!

When Miss Bulstrode’s rut ends, Severus does as promised and has a meeting with her. She comes to his office in the afternoon and he makes them each some tea and breaks out the tin of biscuits, because if there was ever a time for biscuits in his regular duties as head of house, post-first heat/rut conversations was the time.

“How are you adjusting?” he opens with, and Millicent takes a moment to think and take a bite of her shortbread before responding.

“It’s different,” she settles on, “I knew ever since rut and presentation were explained to me that the way things smelled and the way my instincts react to things would change after I had my first rut. But I didn’t realize just how different things would be.”

“It’s certainly an adjustment. It’s important for you to work on identifying what your new instincts are telling you so that you are in full control of your actions,” he levels a look at her, “this is important for everyone, but even more so for you, as an alpha. You may find, especially if you are close with any omegas, that your instincts will drive your towards certain behaviors. You need to learn what is instinct and what is you, and find a healthy balance.”

The girl nods, as serious as ever. Severus would never admit it, but he found her stoic nature to be mildly amusing, especially when compared to the other Slytherin girls of her year.

“Have you discussed mating and compatibility with your parents?”

“Yes, my dad’s an alpha and mum’s an omega, and they explained everything to me before I left for my first year.”

“Good. Now let us talk about suppressants. Did you discuss this with Madam Pomfrey?”

“We did. She said that the school could provide me with a standard potion, or I could talk to you about a safer long-term one.”

Suppressants were a tricky business. Left to their natural cycles, alphas went into rut and omegas into heat four times a year, roughly three months apart and typically aligned with the seasons. This was generally viewed as inconvenient, especially if one was not attempting to conceive a child with a partner, and so for as long as people were making medications, they were attempting to suppress alphas’ and omegas’ cycles.

While possible, suppressing heats and ruts was difficult. When it came down to it, modern potions could be brewed to help a witch or wizard suppress their cycles, but the longer you were on a potion, the more likely it was that the potion would fail, sending the user into an unwanted and unplanned heat or rut. The more reliable the potion, the more expensive it was, in large part because it had to be custom-made for the individual. As a result, most individuals who chose to use a suppressant would only do so for three of their four heats/ruts of the year, and would pick one to ride out either by themselves or with a partner, decreasing the likelihood that their suppressants would fail on them.

Severus brewed his own suppressant, and was willing to do so for the alpha and omega students of Hogwarts if they requested it, because quite frankly, it was better for literally everyone involved if the small portion of Hogwarts students that were alphas or omegas didn’t go into heat or rut three times during each school year.

“Provided you’re willing to sit through a few diagnostic charms and donate a few drops of blood, I am more than willing to do so.” 

Millicent looks at him with a small but genuine smile on her face. 

“Of course. Thank you, professor.”

A few evenings later Severus finds himself entering the sitting room about an hour before he has to go on patrol, having just exited his lab after finalizing Miss Bulstrode’s suppressant potion, to find Miss Potter sitting in one of the armchairs, a book on her lap and her eyes rimmed red.

“Is everything alright, Miss Potter?” he asks, concerned about the girl. He had picked up on the fact that she seemed to be have been largely shunned and scorned by the other students of the school, including a number of her own housemates and a few friends since her name had come out of the goblet.

She shrugs, and closes the book, which he notices is the one he lent her on the history of the tournament. He had lent her it primarily because it gave an overview of the tasks and results of every previous tournament, in order to hopefully give the girl a better idea as to what she could potentially be going up against.

“Ron’s not talking to me, which really shouldn’t surprise me because whenever he’s mad at Hermione or me that’s what he does, but he’s being a right git and refusing to believe me when I tell him that I didn’t enter myself in the tournament, and it’s one thing for the rest of the school to call me a liar and hate me for it, but it’s another thing when it’s Ron.”

Severus lets out a deep breath, and tries not to let his lack of surprise that the youngest male Weasley is being an irrational fool to show on his face. The boy was young and jealous, and while it wasn’t an excuse for his behavior, it wasn’t exactly surprising that this was how he was behaving either.

“Sometimes,” he begins, “we hurt those we care about as a result of lashing out about our own insecurities,” she opens her mouth to protest, and he holds out a hand to ask her to pause before he continues, “this is not to say that Mister Weasley’s actions are acceptable, or that he does not owe you the most sincere of apologies once he gets over himself. All I am saying is that he is the second youngest of seven children, and all of his elder siblings are very successful in their own ways, and that his two best friends are a witch who is hailed as the brightest witch of her age and the girl-who-lived. He is jealous, and while his actions have undoubtedly been unkind and hurtful to you, they are rooted in his own insecurities, not to a failing on your end or his genuine belief that you would lie to him about something important.”

The statement came more from Severus’ own self-reflection on his failings and the end of his friendship with Lily than any true depth of knowledge of Ronald Weasley’s psyche, but he knew that that didn’t make it any less true. He also, due to the grateful look on Harriet’s face, knew that that didn’t make it any less what she needed to hear.

November continues, and Severus finds himself in the sitting room with Harriet on several more afternoons, with new books sitting on the coffee table each time.

First, they were on the history of the tournament and defensive magic.

Then, they were on dragons.

Now, they were still on dragons, but Harriet was sitting across the room, summoning them to her repeatedly.

Having given his word not to help her, he refrains from asking her why she was so determined to learn the summoning spell, but he does correct her wand movement after some careful observation. Her spells start working a bit better after that.

He sits in the teachers’ stands for the task and tries not to let his emotions come through on his face or through his scent as he comes to the realization that Harriet will be the last of the champions to compete, or that she will be facing the Hungarian Horntail.

Honestly, he doesn't even know why he’s surprised that she’d end up with the most vicious of the available dragons to face off against. It is Harriet Potter, the girl-who-lived-to-almost-die-every-school-year after all.

He’s not impressed by Krum managing to get his dragon to trample most of her real eggs, nor is he too impressed by Diggory’s approach. Delacour’s spellwork to put the dragon into a trance is rather impressive for a witch of her age to succeed in casting solo, and he is in turn unimpressed by the low scores the judges give her for her showing, which was significantly less flashy but more well thought out and skillful than that of Krum or Diggory.

He is impressed by Harriet’s ability to outfly a dragon, and her ability to almost give him a heart attack.

He’s inordinately proud when she completes the task with only a single scratch to her shoulder.

If there was one thing that pissed Severus Snape off more than anything, it was people stealing from his potions stores. It wasn’t that hard to get potions ingredients. Students who needed them were more than capable of purchasing them in Hogsmeade or via owl order, and if a student was unable to afford to purchase additional ingredients, well, he knew what that was like and had been known to come to arrangements with students in the past. He had several upper-year students that he paid to help with the brewing for the hospital wing, a few third through fifth years who helped prepare ingredients that were too finicky to be assigned as a task for detention in a similar arrangement, and a portion of his supply budget was set aside each year specifically to be used for supplies for supervised open lab hours that any potions student was welcome to brew during.

As a generally disliked professor, he didn’t have many students who were willing to come to the supervised open lab hours, but those who did tended to be students who genuinely liked the art, and he was more than willing to provide ingredients to those who wished to either experiment or improve their skills in a safe environment.

Theft of ingredients on the other hand, well that just pissed Severus off. Especially when, for the second time in three years, the ingredients that were going missing were for polyjuice potion, and unlike the first time, when the ingredients were only stolen once, they kept on going missing.

“It’s not like it’s that hard to order boomslang skin!” Severus complains to Minerva, who looks over her crystal tumbler at him in concern.

“Did you tell Albus that your ingredients are going missing again, Severus?” she asks, and he sighs, taking another sip of the firewhiskey.

“Of course I did. It’s completely ruining my budget for the year since I keep on having to restock, and I’ve had to rework my syllabus for both of my NEWT classes so I can be sure that I actually have it in the stores for them when they need it for the potions they're brewing. But Albus just brushes it off like he always does, as if it isn’t becoming a serious problem!” Minerva opens her mouth to reply, but Severus barrels forward, “And! As if that isn’t enough, it’s also one of the key ingredients in polyjuice, and the regularity of it going missing is making me really think that there’s an imposter somewhere in the building.”

Minerva grimaces, and pours them each another finger.

“Well that’s a terrible thought.”

The next day Severus notices Miss Potter reading the book he left her on magical languages in the great hall during her free period, and is grateful that at least  _ that’s _ going alright.

Unfortunately, Severus’ term does not get any better as it closes in December. This lack of improvement can be boiled down to two words: Yule Ball.

Severus isn’t exactly a social butterfly, but he has enough connections through his own career as a potions master, his role as a Death Eater, and his role as Dumbledore’s reformed Death Eater lackey that he’s been to a number of balls over the course of his life. They’ve ranged from quite enjoyable (most balls hosted by Narcissa Malfoy since the fall of the Dark Lord) to absolutely miserable (most balls hosted by Narcissa Malfoy what were attended by the Dark Lord, as well as most balls hosted by the Ministry of Magic).

The Triwizard Tournament’s Yule Ball has managed to outshine even the worst of the balls he’s attended prior to it due to one specific addition that was lacking at any of the others: teenagers.

He was previously unaware of the fact that a ball attended by a megalomaniacal Dark Lord would be preferable to a ball attended by hundreds of horny, hormonal teenagers, but that fact is now exceedingly obvious.  At least at a ball attended by the Dark Lord, he didn’t have to break up amorous students attempting to fornicate in rose bushes.

The evening started out alright. Severus had put on his nicest dress robes and had an engaging conversation with Beauxbatons’ Potions Mistress about a new development in the research for a cure to dragonpox over a rather nice bowl of goulash and glass of wine. The students were loud, but he wasn’t seated at the high table, so he didn’t have to deal with Albus or Karkaroff, and he didn’t think that Miss Potter would cause too much trouble as he knew how little she was looking forward to the ball herself.

And then the dancing started. Two things became immediately obvious to Severus: one, Miss Potter looked very grown up and very, very pretty in her bottle green dress robes (and he was immediately going to lock those thoughts in an iron coffin and throw that coffin into the North Sea never to be thought of again), and two, Ronald Weasley was not pleased by the fact that Hermione Granger was at the dance with Viktor Krum, despite the fact that he was accompanying a champion himself.

Harriet had mentioned a few nights prior that she was going to the ball with Weasley since the girl she had originally asked was already attending with someone else, and he had thought nothing of it at the time. Weasley had apologized to her after the first task, and the pair were friends. As a champion she needed to have a date for the ball, and as a teenage boy, he wanted to have a date for the ball. It made sense.

But that was then, and this was now, and Severus Snape was currently in the rose garden trying to ignore the crying Miss Potter after having listened to Mister Weasley and Miss Granger have a fight about Miss Granger attending the ball with Viktor Krum. Weasley had glared daggers at the pair throughout the first dance of the ball, making a fool of himself, and by extension, Harriet, before storming off the dance floor the moment it ended. In their fight it was made clear that he was jealous that Granger went to the ball with Krum and not him, and also that he hadn’t particularly wanted to go to the ball with _Harriet_ in the first place. It ended with Granger storming off to join her date once again on the dance floor, Weasley storming off back to Gryffindor tower, and Harriet leaving the hall for the rose garden, where she was now crying, Severus was breaking up horny couples, and Karkaroff was trying to corner him to talk about their Dark Marks in far too public a venue.

Severus breaks up another couple as he disengages from Durmstrang’s headmaster, and can’t wait for this night to be over.


End file.
